N.C. Autistic Boy, Mom Kicked Off American Eagle Plane
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,371601,00.html

A 2 1/2-year-old autistic North Carolina boy and his mother were kicked off an American Eagle flight taxiing to a Raleigh-Durham Airport Monday after the crew deemed the child “uncontrollable,” WTVD reported.

“If they just would have been a little more understanding I think that none of this would have been a problem,” the boy’s mother, Janice Farrell, told the station, adding that the flight attendant made things worse.

“She kept coming over and tugging his seatbelt to make it tighter, ‘This has to stay tight.’ And then he was wiggling around and trying to get out of his seatbelt. And she kept coming over and reprimanding him and yelling at him.”

Farrell said she was doing everything to keep her son calm, but after one of the pilots came back to the cabin and gave her and her son, Jarrett, a stern warning, the situation got worst.

“The pilot made an announcement that there was a woman and her child on the plane and the child is uncontrollable,” as he was turning the plane around, Farrell said.

A representative for American Airlines, the parent company of American Eagle, apologized to Farrell when she called, but a spokesman for the company told WTVD a different story.

He said Farrell was not “complying with FAA regulations” and “this was the right decision,” explaining she wouldn’t put her bag in the overhead compartment.

Farrell denied those accusations.